In 2004, the video game industry had a monumental year as games like Half-Life 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Halo 2, World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament 2004 broke new ground. And that same year, Champlain College in Burlington debuted its Game Studio to train students in the relatively new field of game development.
Champlain鈥檚 Game Studio has since become a professional pipeline to land students at notable studios around the world 鈥� including across the border in Montreal, one of the gaming capitals of the world.
Several alumni have ended up at Behaviour Interactive, the studio known for Dead by Daylight, a four versus one horror game, and their latest release The Casting of Frank Stone. Champlain students visited Behaviour last fall to ask staff about working in the industry.
Champlain鈥檚 curriculum for students has evolved through the decades, growing from just a few different classes to seven distinct programs 鈥� allowing students to gain comprehensive knowledge of the field from conception, programming, production, marketing, distribution and more.
Part of that work can happen in Montreal, where Champlain offers a semester abroad for about 20 to 30 students in the heart of downtown.
Montreal鈥檚 game industry has been growing for decades. Genevieve Lord, who is in charge of Champlain College鈥檚 Montreal campus, says the game company Ubisoft was lured to the city in 1997 with tax credits and other incentives. Other studios followed suit.
Today, Montreal houses companies of all sizes, with branches of large corporations like Square Enix or Warner Brothers, along with untold amounts of indie developers.
"Quebec had a very positive tax credit investment and incentive model, and so Ubisoft came," Lord said.
Ubisoft Montreal produced iconic games like The Prince of Persia and Assassins Creed. Now, another part of the studio's legacy is
On Champlain's Canadian campus, there's a course specifically for the students who work on this project every year, getting paired up with mentors at Ubisoft and presenting their game alongside other participating colleges.
Each year, Champlain鈥檚 senior class develops a game that mimics production cycles used in the real world. Last year, students worked on producing the game
"So we're looking at a process that takes not just one semester, but actually a whole four years of undergraduate education, culminating in a year-long development cycle," said Jonathan Ferguson, who teaches game design, development and history at Champlain.
Winnie Song used to design games for Square Enix Montreal and is now an assistant professor at New York University. She knows firsthand how powerful a student project can be in opening doors 鈥� her capstone project landed her a job immediately after she graduated with a master's in game design.
Executives at Square Enix had seen , which came in second place at a showcase at the 2015 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Song tells her students all the time that their final project has to be their "name card," because that's what will stick out to future employers.
For the students who study abroad, Lord says the experience is both an immersion in French-Canadian culture as well as the gaming industry.
And that practical experience and face time with established companies goes a long way, because the game industry is both competitive and volatile.
The industry had a huge peak of growth during the pandemic, followed by mass layoffs, game cancellations, and studio acquisitions, mergers and shutdowns in the past two years.
After all, in a bad year, Champlain College says about three-quarters of students still find jobs in the game industry within a year of graduation, while 85% to nearly all graduates find positions in a really good year.
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